As soon as the ogre was out of sight, the forest fell into a deep, profound silence. A hush had fallen over the trees and murk of the swamp and laced it with the brittle tension of something unfinished, something that still lurked just beyond sight, crouched in the crooked trees and damp moss. 

Aelorian stood barefoot in the soft, churned loam of the riverbank, skin still wet from the stream. 

His fingers curled around a square of silk, thin, delicate, and worn to near transparency. It had once been exquisite. Now the silver embroidery at the corners unraveled like soft-threaded veins, and a faded stain bloomed across one edge, ancient and impossible to name. Blood, perhaps. Or wine, spilled during some drunken temple feast. Or time itself, most likely. 

It was hard to believe that the dull cloth had once been a handkerchief, a gift from a woman who had raised him in the Temple of Flame. Nurse Vehlari, the only person who had shown him softness and love. With worn hands, she had stitched stars on the little scrap of fabric with silver thread. And when he came of age, she gifted it to him before the Council came to take him away.

Now it clung to its last thread, the last memory of kindness the world long since buried. 

Time did that to beautiful things. Even elves, eventually.

Aelorian was still young by elven standards, at only three hundred and fifty, a blink in the eyes of the elders, a flicker of starlight still learning how to burn without being consumed. But sometimes he felt as old and thin as the silk in his hands.

He wrung out the little cloth slowly, fingers tinged blue and stiff with cold. His teeth chattered, but well-versed in the ways of never showing discomfort, he did it quietly and kept his chin tilted high even as goosebumps bloomed like stars across his bare arms. The river had rinsed the mud from his skin, but it had stolen his body heat with it, and now the air felt like glass cutting across his back. 

He turned toward the bush where he’d hung his robes. Still damp and slightly muddy. Aelorian made a face at them, sharp and offended, as if they had personally betrayed him. The silk had once shimmered like moonlight brushed across silver—a sacred dye. Now it looked like it had been dragged through a battlefield and pissed on by a particularly vengeful boar. Or an ogre with a grudge. Which, frankly, seemed more likely. 

Still, he slipped it on. With a dramatic sigh and a delicate shiver, he wrapped himself in the cold cling of silk that pressed against the curves of his spine and kissed the hollow beneath his ribs like an apology it didn’t mean.

Thorne still hadn’t returned yet, which was perfectly fine.

Aelorian didn’t need a babysitter, least of all one shaped like an oversized, growling beast. He’d spent most of his life under guard after all, always watched and escorted, always told what to do and where to go, who to bow to.

But he was tired of being protected, of being a relic locked in a glass case. If he wanted to freeze his ass off in the woods and pick berries that might or might not murder him, then that was his business.

Aelorian wandered further from the stream, soft feet silent against moss and leaf rot. Damp silk clung to his thighs with every step, his belt half-hearted at his waist, slipping looser with each breath. He didn’t tighten it. Let it fall if it wanted. Let the forest watch. He wasn’t hiding anymore. He was cold and he was bored and, if he was being honest, just a little bit lonely. Not that he would admit it. Especially not out loud. Especially not to the ogre.

A few crooked paces ahead, he spotted berries nestled in a thicket of thorns, red and glassy, gleaming like blood clots in the gloom. The bush sagged with their weight, low-hanging and glistening wet. They shouldn’t have been so vibrant. Not here. Not in this part of the world.

But gods, they looked lovely.

Aelorian knelt gracefully, long fingers reaching for the nearest berry. They smelled sweet and overripe. Almost too much. And somewhere, buried deep in the part of his mind trained to recognize danger wrapped in beauty, a warning stirred.

Still, he wanted to touch them—just one.

His fingers brushed against the nearest one. The skin gave slightly beneath his touch, delicate and yielding. His mouth watered, despite every part of his brain whispering this is probably poison, this is probably cursed, this is how people die in the woods, and no one ever finds their bones—

A hand seized his wrist.

Aelorian gasped and spun half-around—

Thorne.

His hair hung in dripping tangles, half-matted to his brow, and his eyes—usually narrowed in scorn—flared wide now, blazing with something hotter and sharper than rage.

“Don’t touch those!” Thorne snarled, voice low and ragged, his breath warm against Aelorian’s temple. “Gods’ blood, do you ever think before you act?”

Aelorian blinked, lips parted around a breath he hadn’t meant to take. “I just—”

“They’re witch-fruit,” Thorne snapped, cutting him off. “They smell sweet, don’t they? Like something you’d want to shove into your greedy little elf mouth without thinking twice.”

Aelorian frowned, offended by the tone, the accusation, the very idea that he was greedy, even if—well, alright. Maybe he was curious.

But Thorne wasn’t finished. His voice dropped further, rough and worn down at the edges like stone scraped raw. “That’s how they get you. Eat even one of those, and it unravels you slowly from the inside out. You forget your name. You forget who you are. I watched ogres—full-grown, armor-wearing, godsdamned war-hardened ogres—stuff themselves on witch-fruit and stumble into the swamp like they were going home. Smiling. Laughing. And then they were just… gone. Found nothing but their bones days later.”

Aelorian went still as the words coiled around him, cold and sharp, digging in beneath his ribs.

“Oh,” he said softly. He hadn’t even realized how close to danger he had just been. He’d just seen something lovely, bright, and tempting. “I was just curious,” he murmured.

Thorne’s grip tightened, not hard, but insistent. His calloused fingers wrapped around Aelorian’s delicate wrist like he didn’t trust him to stay tethered to the world otherwise.

“Curiosity,” Thorne said, voice low and bristling with unspoken things, “is how people get killed out here, elf.”

Aelorian’s mouth opened again, halfway to some clever quip, something dry and cruel about ogres and paranoia, but then he looked up, and he caught the look on the ogre’s face. There was no amusement there. No smugness. Just the thinnest thread of panic curling beneath the fury.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Aelorian said before he could stop himself. The words slipped out softer than he intended. “That’s why you’re angry, isn’t it?”

“Don’t,” Thorne bit out, words sharp, “Don’t try to turn this into something that it’s not.”

Aelorian flinched, then recovered like the prince that he was. “I’m not,” He replied, eyes narrowing, half-hurt and half-stubborn. “I just didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” Thorne growled, but the words came too fast and defensive, telling everything that needed to be said behind the bluster. “Ogres don’t get scared.”

His grip on Aelorian’s wrist lingered a second longer than it should’ve. Then, like the contact had finally burned through his stubborn denial, he released it with a muttered curse, shaking his hand once, twice—like he could fling away the feeling he had no name for. “Elves... always so glittery.” The ogre muttered. 

Aelorian watched him, expression unreadable at first. Then he lifted his chin, just slightly. “Fine,” he said coolly, drawing himself up like silk over armor. “Be an ogre about it.”

“I am an ogre,” Thorne growled, stepping back. “That’s literally what I am.”

Aelorian dusted invisible dirt from his sleeve, looking everywhere but at the ogre’s face. “And here I was, thinking you were just socially incompetent.”

That earned a snort. “That’s rich, coming from someone who tried to eat enchanted, poisoned berries because they were shiny.”

Aelorian finally looked at him, eyes narrowed, lips pursed in offense. “It was not because they were shiny.”

Thorne arched a brow. “No?”

“It was because I am absolutely starving,” Aelorian snapped, his arms crossing. “And because nobody told me there were cursed berries in your piss-wet swamp, and because I’ve had a very long week, and also possibly because I was curious—which, last I checked, isn’t a crime—and if you hadn’t snuck up on me like some enormous, mud-drenched specter of doom—”

“I saved your life.”

“—rudely, then maybe I wouldn’t have panicked and—”

“Aelorian.”

The name cracked through his rant like thunder, not loud, but deep. A blade of voice honed on something quiet and deliberate.

Aelorian stopped when the ogre uttered his name. His full name. Not a title, or a mocking nickname spat with venom—just his name, spoken with weight and intention.

Not Mud Petal. Not elf. Not a prince. Just—Aelorian.

And that made something stutter inside him. The sharp words on his tongue stilled. His heartbeat did something traitorous and dramatic. His arms uncrossed, suddenly aware of themselves. He blinked, his posture faltering with a visible shiver of vulnerability. And gods, the way Thorne had said it, like he knew it, like he saw right through him. Not the silk, not the sharpness. Him.

The tips of his pointy ears flushed a brilliant pink.

“…What?” he asked, quieter now. The word curled small between them, stripped of all that earlier fire.

Thorne exhaled like he was releasing a mountain from his chest, voice dipping low. “Don’t do that again.”

Aelorian swallowed.

And then, because he was Aelorian Moonbeam Ithrienel, heir to the Silver Flame and professional deflector of all things sincere, he cleared his throat and said, lightly:

“Well. Noted. No fondling the seductive murder fruit. Wouldn’t want to ruin your ogre vacation with my untimely death.”

“Godsdamnit.” Thorne’s scowl was thunder as he shoved past a curtain of moss, his chains jangling like iron thunder in his wake. “Knew you couldn’t stay quiet ten seconds. Elves always gotta have the last laugh, don’t they?”

“Where are you going, ogre?” Aelorian called sweetly. “To sulk? Perhaps to brood? To polish your heroic scowl in private?”

“Anywhere you’re not!” Thorne’s growl echoed through the trees. His massive shoulders vanished between the branches.

Aelorian smirked, plucking a leaf from his sleeve. “Broods like a tragic widow,” he muttered. “Honestly. Who knew he once bit a god in the ass?”

He waited. Because Thorne always came back. For all his snarling and bluster, the ogre would’ve left him rotting in this swamp long ago if he truly wanted to be rid of him.

But the forest stayed loud with absence. Too loud.

“Ogre?” Aelorian called, feigning boredom, though his spine tightened. “This isn’t funny anymore. You can come back now.”

The reply came as a clatter, a snarl, and laughter. Not warm, not human—sharp, cruel, ringing like glass breaking.

Every hair on Aelorian’s neck rose.

The laughter multiplied—one voice, then three, then a chorus, shrill and giddy. It scraped bone-deep, too sharp for joy, too wild for song. Shadows flickered in the underbrush, darting too quickly, faster and brighter than any bird or insect. And then came Thorne’s voice: snarling, swearing, and threaded with pain.

Aelorian moved, swift and silent, and broke into a clearing.

Thorne loomed in the center, massive body bowed, chains snarled in branches and vines. His wrists bled black where the iron cut deep. Circling him was a swarm of fairies, no bigger than Aelorian’s hand, yet their presence thickened the air like smoke. Their wings were shards of fractured glass, their eyes empty sockets of pale fire. Needle teeth gleamed as they darted in and out, clawing at his skin, shrieking in delight whenever they drew blood.

“Bloody fair folk,” Thorne spat, thrashing, each lunge dragging the chains tighter. 

One particularly bold fairy swooped, sinking its teeth into his shoulder. The bite sizzled, black blood hissing where it touched the air. Thorne bellowed, but the chains snapped taut and yanked him back. Another perched delicately on his tusk, stroking it like the armrest of a throne, voice high and cruel. “Hold still, ogre. You look prettier in chains.”

Others whispered over each other as they danced around Thorne, a chorus of cracked voices:

Break him.

Gnaw him.

Hollow him out. 

We’ll drink the ogre dry and wring him out.

Their laughter swelled until it drowned out Thorne’s curses, tiny shadows darting over his skin, pulling at him, claiming him.

Aelorian’s heart lurched. He could walk away. Should. Let the forest devour him. Let the ogre’s curses rot in his throat. His hands twitched, just the faintest glow of moonlight gleaming. His every instinct screamed to turn, to vanish into the treeline and leave the ogre to his fate. The beast was not his ally or his friend. He was a chain-draped monster, a blood-soaked brute who had eaten weaker men. 

And yet—

When the fairies’ laughter peaked, it curdled into something hungrier, something sharp. One of them crawled across Thorne’s cheek and pressed its tiny, glass-cut claws into his eye. The ogre roared, thrashing, but the chains only carved deeper, blood rushing down his arms like spilled ink.

Aelorian’s stomach clenched. Not with pity, though. Never that. But there was something in the sight of the ogre—too large to fall, too wild to be caged—being gnawed apart by these carrion wraiths, that scraped against the part of Aelorian that still remembered honor.

He raised his palms, silver light spilling forward. 

The nearest fairy snapped its head toward him, empty sockets blazing. Its mouth stretched into a ragged smile. “Another toy,” it hissed. “Come play, come bleed, come break.”

The others took up the cry, dozens of cracked voices weaving into one:

Break him. Break him. Break him.

Aelorian’s heart pounded. To step forward was to step into ruin. But his feet moved anyway.